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October 2, 2008

Passengers From Jetliner Landing With Gear Up in Kaliningrad Were Not Warned – Passenger

by Sam Savage

KALININGRAD. Oct 2 (Interfax) - The passengers of a Boeing 737 belonging to the KD-Avia airline, which landed with its landing gear up at Kaliningrad last night, had not been warned about the unusual situation before landing.

One of the passengers from the flight told Interfax that the aircraft, which was en route from Barcelona to Kaliningrad, circled four times above the airport before landing. "The crew did not announce that the situation was abnormal, although the passengers understood that something was going wrong by the flight attendants' behavior," he said.

The passengers could feel that the aircraft landed on its fuselage by a loud scraping noise, but there were no strong jolts or jostling, he said.

The passengers saw fire engines surrounding the aircraft after it came to a halt, he said.

KD-Avia Executive Director Leonid Itskov earlier told Interfax that, "for a Boeing 737, this situation could be called quite normal. Pilots train for it on the ground."

The aircraft is designed in such a way that, "in case one of the wheel assemblies fails to extend, all the other assemblies get blocked and do not extend either, and therefore this situation is considered normal, and pilots are trained for it," he said.